My wife and I are on the tail end of the Millennial generation. We are among the last wave that remembers 9/11. We dearly miss ordering off the McDonald’s and Wendy’s dollar menus. We grew up accessing the internet on modems that screamed and beeped at us as if they were tortured alien robots, and it took forever. Additionally, like many in our demographic cohort, we still hold fast to the old ways, maintaining a firm conviction that an expensive or high-stakes purchase should be conducted on a computer and not on a phone. We old fogies understand that it’s way too easy to hit a wrong button or miss fine print on one of those small screens. These Gen Z whippersnappers are reckless for buying plane tickets using a device that doesn’t have a keyboard and a mouse.
Joking aside, all generations from Boomers down to Gen Alpha are united in using their smartphones for at least one thing: betting on sports. Approximately one in four Americans (including one half of men age 18-49) have sports betting accounts, with 80-90 percent of their betting happens on their phones.
In principle, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. Communications technology is not evil in itself, and the Church does not condemn gambling or games of chance.
In practice however, we know that both smartphones and gambling can be highly addictive, and combining them raises prudential concerns. Together they have an increased potential to sap away the time, money, and focus that God gave us to love him and the people he has placed in our lives.
Catholics need to be at the forefront of confronting these real spiritual perils, but we must be clear with regard to what we oppose and why. We need to distinguish between what is inherently immoral and evil (and therefore cannot be tolerated) and what safeguards or limits we want to impose on things that can be good but can also be misused.
It would not just be unhelpful to browbeat your friend for buying a $10 Super Bowl square to support his local fire department; it would distract him from rooting out real evil in his heart. If we become the spiritual “boy who cried wolf,” people will tune out calls to repent and convert in general, and that is not conducive to helping them turn away from sin and to Christ.
A pragmatic way of figuring out if we are betting on sports in a Christian manner would be to ask these three questions:
1. What is my monetary budget for entertainment in general and betting specifically, and is it reasonable?
A Christian is not morally obligated to follow every word of advice from Dave Ramsey, but we are called to use and manage our money well. This includes setting reasonable limits on spending, especially for things like entertainment. The Catechism doesn’t prescribe dollar amounts, but does say that gambling and games of chance become sinful “when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others,” so if we cross that line, we need to stop or make real adjustments.
Each person’s needs and his responsibility for the needs of others will vary based on his state in life, but we are all called to provide for the needs of the Church (CCC 2043) and for the needs of the poor (CCC 2243-2449, among others). Parents are called to provide for both the immediate needs of their families and make prudent plans for their future (CCC 2252, Rerum Novarum 10, among others).
If your sports betting is jeopardizing any of that, you need to stop. If your immediate responsibilities are fulfilled but what you are losing on bets dwarfs what you give to your parish or local crisis pregnancy center, then maybe you should pray about if you are called to be more generous. If you have all the bases covered and spend a moderate amount on this form of entertainment, then move on to the next question.
2. What is my time budget for sports and related activities?
Several hours of your Sunday afternoon are already blocked off for the game. You scroll Instagram and see that the opposing team’s quarterback has been doing poorly, so you excitedly swipe to place a bigger bet. Your now increased emotional investment consumes your lunchbreaks, bathroom breaks, dinner time. Now those three hours have ballooned into ten hours across the whole week. Watching the game might be spent with your family and friends enjoying the sport together—but much of that time was solo on your phone.
If you are reading Scripture each morning, getting to Mass, doing a weekly holy hour, spending time with your family (and especially if you are married, spending real time with your spouse and children), then maybe a little bit of the watching/betting/scrolling isn’t catastrophic. But if you already know that you waste much of your life doomscrolling and can’t put the phone down as it is, or if during Mass all you can think about is your bet on the next game, then you need to set limits and have some sort of accountability in place, or just take a break altogether. Reading, music, exercise, and many other pursuits that you may have been skipping might be good substitutes that can help build good and wholesome leisure time.
3. Does sportsbetting draw me into other near occasions of sin?
The Catechism says that rigging bets is grave matter (mortal sin territory), unless “the damage inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant.” Most of us are not in a position to throw a big game or cheat in any significant way, but there are other near occasions of serious sin that seem to come part and parcel with modern sportsbetting (and to be honest, sports in general)—most prominently impurity.
Modern gambling culture and modern sports have a cozy relationship with pornography. The hubbub about Sidney Sweeney’s nude ad for sportsbetting company Novig is an example of this, but the world of sports has for decades embraced having women strip down to get attention and money through scantily clad cheerleaders, swimsuit editions of sports magazines, etc. There can be a dark synergy connecting gambling, sports, and pornography, especially (but not exclusively) for young men, and that’s dialed up to eleven when you combine all three on smartphones.
If your gambling and time focused on sports becomes a habit that is constantly funneling impure images in your mind, you need to bail out or set strict limits. If it draws you on your device late at night and primes you to fall into serious sin, you need to stop, right now. Replace it with a different leisure activity that’s not on your phone. It is better to enter into heaven without joining in on the big parley than to win the jackpot in Gehenna.
Catholics should promote (or at least tolerate) legitimate and fun games of chance while preventing ourselves from gambling away our livelihoods, both in terms of money and time, through at best an idle pursuit and at worst an addiction. Smartphones and betting apps make this harder to navigate, and people may disagree on what legislative or cultural solutions we should implement in response.
We all, however, can examine our own consciences on our gambling habits so we can follow our Lord’s command to remove the beam in our own eyes so we can help remove the splinter in our brother’s eye. You can bet that will behoove us on Judgement Day and in our relationship with Jesus.